


live on your wire

by glorious_spoon



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27156755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: It’s not like Eddie’s completely incapable of putting two and two together. He knows what Bev saw in the deadlights all those years ago. He can guess why Richie was crying in his sleep, and why his first move upon waking up back in the cistern was to tackle Eddie out of the way of something that would definitely have killed him.Or: Richie saves Eddie, but the nightmares still linger.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 26
Kudos: 224





	live on your wire

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware that everyone and their mother has already done a version of this fic but... here's my contribution anyway! :D
> 
> Title from 'Dangerous Type' by The Cars, which is a little too apropos for this fandom.

It’s not the noise that wakes Eddie up, or at least, not directly. He’s been drifting in and out for hours, flopping over and over on the lousy hotel mattress trying to find a comfortable position. His back is pretty much one big bruise; he swears he can feel every single pointy rock he landed on when Richie tackled him in the cavern under Neibolt, including one that drove into his kidney so hard that he’s surprised he’s not pissing blood.

He remembers one of those massive spiked limbs coming down hard enough to shatter stone in the exact spot where he was kneeling a moment earlier, so he doesn’t begrudge the bruises. Much. But it’s fucking impossible to get comfortable, which means that he’s awake enough to hear the muffled thud through the wall separating his room from Richie’s, and the low moan that follows it.

For some insane reason, his first thought is that maybe Richie’s in there jerking off, less than three feet away through the thin wall. A moment later, though, there’s another ragged moan that sounds nothing like pleasure at all, and Richie says, “Help him, we can still— _guys_ , we can still—no!”

Eddie sits bolt upright, suddenly wide awake.

“Rich,” he calls, pitching his voice to be heard through the wall separating them.

“Eddie,” Richie says, and for a moment Eddie thinks it’s a response, that Richie has woken up from the nightmare he’s clearly having and Eddie can go back to trying and failing to get to sleep. But then Richie says, “Eds— _Eddie_ , come on, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay—”

“Richie,” Eddie says again, louder. He raises his fist to pound on the wall, then lets it drop and slides out of bed. The floor is cold enough to make him wince as he makes his way across the room, out the door, into the hallway. He can still hear Richie from out here; it’s a little more muffled, but Richie is also getting louder, sounding panicked, which means it’s only a matter of time before he wakes up everyone else on this floor.

Eddie knocks on the door, then tries the knob when that gets no response. He isn’t expecting it to turn, but it does.

Another time, he’d be outraged at the carelessness of that. He actually kind of is right now, but he pushes the door open anyway. His eyes are still adjusted for the dark, which means that he can see Richie writhing under the blankets like he’s trying to fight something. He’s crying in his sleep, saying Eddie’s name over and over in a cracked, awful tone.

“Okay, knock it off,” Eddie says sharply, something icy twisting through him. He stalks over to the bed and leans down to grab Richie by the shoulders, giving him a firm shake. “I’m right here. You’re having a nightmare, man, you gotta wake up.”

Richie’s eyes snap open beneath him.

“Hey, okay, there we go—” Eddie starts to say, and then Richie surges upright, grabbing him tight by both shoulders and slamming him back onto the bed. It’s almost exactly the move he pulled under Neibolt after he came out of the deadlights.

Eddie grunts when he hits the mattress—it’s a lot softer than the rocks were, but he’s still fucking _sore_ —and bucks up involuntarily against the solid weight of Richie’s body. He’s heavy and warm, and his eyes are wild, strangely vulnerable in the dark without his glasses. He stares down at Eddie like he’s looking at a ghost, and it’s that visible edge of panic that makes Eddie take a deep breath, trying to tamp down his own galloping heartbeat.

“Rich,” he says carefully. His throat is doing something weird. It doesn’t feel like an asthma attack. He doesn’t know _what_ it feels like, only that he’s suddenly very aware of how closely they’re pressed together. How heavy Richie is on top of him, how big and warm his hands are. “Hey, come on. It’s just me. You’re okay.”

Richie blinks down at him. Eddie can see when he realizes where he is and what’s going on, because an instant later he lets go of Eddie like he’s been burned and shoves himself backward so hard that he almost falls off the bed.

Eddie sits up carefully, with proper consideration for his generally battered state. Richie switches the lamp on, flooding the room with dusty yellow light. He lets out a noisy breath, lifts his hands to scrub them both over his face, then mutters, “Fucking _shit._ ”

“Rich? You okay?”

Richie nods. He's facing away from Eddie, the broad lines of his shoulders hunched and tense. “Yeah. I’m okay. Fucking peachy. Sorry about that, man.”

_Okay_ , in this case, is clearly a relative term.

It’s not like Eddie’s completely incapable of putting two and two together. He knows what Bev saw in the deadlights all those years ago. He can guess why Richie was crying in his sleep, and why his first move upon waking up back in the cistern was to tackle Eddie out of the way of something that would definitely have killed him.

He thinks about asking anyway, but he can’t quite shape the question in his mouth. Richie has always been the brave one, the one with all the words. Richie was the one who mouthed off to bullies even while they were beating the snot out of him, laughing with bloody teeth.

Eddie has only ever managed to be brave when he didn’t let himself think about it.

_This kills monsters if you believe it does,_ he thinks, and flexes his hand like he can still feel the imprint of the fence post in his palm. It’s not the same thing at all, but he still has to take a deep, fortifying breath before he can make himself scoot over to the edge of the bed and tug Richie into a tight, awkward, sideways hug.

Richie sags against him, sleep-warm in his worn concert t-shirt. He’s wearing plaid boxers and no pajama pants, a fact that Eddie didn’t really register until now. His legs are long and pale, dusted with dark hair, the lean muscles in his thighs flexing as he bounces his heels restlessly against the floor. It takes Eddie several seconds to drag his eyes away, and when he does his heart is racing again.

“Didn’t mean to tackle you like that,” Richie mumbles. His stubble scrapes roughly at Eddie’s skin, and Eddie can feel the hinge of his jaw move as he speaks. "Sorry."

“It’s fine,” Eddie says. It comes out weird and tight. He clears his throat. “Don’t worry about it, I mean it.”

“How’s your, uh…” Richie trails off, gestures vaguely with his free hand. “Everything?”

Eddie makes a face, then immediately regrets it when the stitches in his cheek pull painfully. He’s mostly been getting around it by talking with a very stiff jaw, but it still fucking hurts. “I’m pretty sure one of those rocks ruptured my kidney. I don’t care what the doctor said; his medical degree clearly came out of a cereal box. And I’m definitely going to get sepsis from swimming in the quarry with an open wound like a fucking idiot.”

He wasn’t really trying to make Richie laugh, but it’s a strange kind of relief all the same when he does.

“Jesus, Eds. I missed you.”

“You didn’t even remember me until two days ago.”

“Yeah,” Richie admits. “Still.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, quieter and more sincere, because—he gets it. He does. He’s been missing people he couldn’t remember for almost thirty years. They all have. “Fuck. I wish Stan was here.”

Richie nods against his shoulder, takes a shaky breath, then lets it out, warm and damp against Eddie’s throat. It makes Eddie twitch, which makes his battered muscles lock up, and whatever he was going to say is lost in a pained hiss. Richie pulls back slightly.

“Seriously, you okay?”

“I’m okay. Just bruised.”

“I really am sorry about your back,” Richie says, with more sincerity than Eddie knows what to do with.

“I guess it’s better than the alternative.”

Richie lets out a sharp, humorless bark of laughter. “You have no idea, man. I keep thinking I’m gonna open my eyes and I’ll be back in that cave with you fucking skewered and bleeding out right on top of me.”

“Oh,” Eddie says inanely, and winces. “That sounds, uh—not great.”

“Yeah. Understatement of the fucking millennium.”

Eddie nods against his shoulder, then says, without letting himself think about it about it very much, “Would it be weird if I offered to stay?”

Richie goes very still.

“Offered… to stay here? Tonight?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He already wants to snatch the words back. It _is_ weird, very fucking weird, and they both know it.

But Richie just shifts away slightly, rubbing the back of his neck, face tilted so that Eddie can’t really see his expression. “No, man, that wouldn’t be weird. Are you gonna actually be able to sleep, though?”

“Your mattress can’t be any worse than the one in my room.”

Richie makes an odd, swallowed noise, then pulls away completely, flopping onto his back and swinging his legs over until they’re not bumping against Eddie, leaving a sudden cold spot in his wake. He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes and mutters, under his breath, “Truth or dare, asshole.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just some shit the clown said when he was trying to fuck with my head.” Richie still has a hand over his face. “So, hey, I was going to do the whole big coming-out thing with everybody tomorrow, but since we’re already having awkward late-night conversations anyway, uh. I’m gay.”

“You—” Eddie pauses, completely derailed. “Wait, really?”

“Really truly deeply fuckin’ gay,” Richie says into his hand. “I just thought you should know, like, before you make any decisions about climbing into bed with me.”

“Jesus Christ, Rich, I’m not worried about your fucking cooties,” Eddie blurts without thinking. “Uh, I mean—”

Richie is already laughing, breathless and wheezy and relieved-sounding. He shoves his hand back into his hair, then lets it flop onto the bed between them. “Fuck you, man.”

“Fuck _you_.” He clears his throat. “Did I—I didn’t know that before, did I? Did I forget?”

“Nobody did. Or I mean—I guess the fucking clown knew, obviously, but I didn’t tell anybody. Stan might have figured it out, I don’t know. Never asked.”

Never will, now. Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, struck by a fresh wave of grief. He swallows it down, then reaches over to squeeze Richie’s hand. “Thanks for telling me.”

Richie squeezes back, quickly and a little too hard. His hand is warm even in the chilly room, which is oddly familiar. Richie always ran hot. It made sharing the hammock with him downright unbearable in the summer, a sweltering tangle of lanky, sweaty limbs with Richie’s long toes jabbing him in the armpit. Even so, it never occurred to Eddie to just climb out.

He pulls his hand away from Richie’s and sits up, swinging his legs off the bed.

“I’m locking the door,” he says when Richie’s eyes follow him warily. “I can’t believe you were sleeping with the door open in a fucking hotel, man, even if I _hadn’t_ just gotten stabbed by a serial killer here, do you have any idea how stupid that is?”

Richie grins, looking startled. “Pretty fucking stupid?”

“Pretty fucking stupid,” Eddie agrees firmly. He locks the door, crosses back over to the bed, and settles on the left-side pillow, facing Richie. After a moment, he kicks at the covers until he can tuck his cold feet under them. “Turn off the light, would you?”

Richie swallows visibly, then nods. He twists, half leaning out of bed to pull the cord on the lamp, and darkness swallows the room. The mattress bounces as he settles back down. He shifts like he’s getting comfortable, then lets out a low sigh.

Eddie closes his eyes. It _is_ weird. It’s been decades since he’s shared a bed with anyone other than Myra, and even with his eyes shut and no part of their bodies touching, the difference is obvious. Richie smells like hotel shampoo and some warm masculine scent that might be aftershave, although he didn’t look like he actually bothered shaving. He radiates heat like a furnace. It’s fucking weird.

It’s not bad, though. Eddie nestles his head against the pillow, then reaches across to pat at Richie. His hand lands on the warm point of an elbow, and he leaves it there.

Richie sighs again, shifting slightly, then murmurs, “Thanks, Eds.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, and smiles when Richie huffs laughter. “And don’t call me Eds. You know I— I—” he cuts himself off with a yawn.

“You hate that,” Richie finishes for him. It’s soft and oddly raw. Eddie pats his arm again.

“Yeah, exactly. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

“I can’t believe I forgot how fucking bossy you are,” Richie says, but he sounds fond.

Eddie snorts into his pillow, and it’s quiet after that.

* * *

He wakes to the soft light of morning and the sound of heavy, snuffly breaths that aren’t quite snores. There’s a moment of disorientation, and then he opens his eyes and the world seems to settle into place around him.

His hand is still on Richie’s elbow, and he’s curled in around it so that his knees are tucked up against Richie’s hip, nose nestled against the ball of his shoulder. There’s a nascent tension strung down his spine that suggests that he’ll be sore as hell when he finally gets up, but for now, he’s pretty comfortable. Surprisingly comfortable. Maybe it’s the way Richie is putting off heat in his sleep.

Richie is on his back, his t-shirt twisted around him to pull the stretched collar open enough that Eddie can see his collarbone and a dark suggestion of chest hair. His hair is a wreck, and his stubble is approaching an actual beard and threaded liberally with gray. His mouth is slightly open, his eyelashes a short dark fringe against his cheek. The planes of his face are still strange: squarer and more angular than the skinny round-faced boy Eddie remembers.

_I could kiss him right now_ , he thinks, and discovers that it isn’t a new thought. It’s one he’s had, with varying degrees of self-awareness, every time Richie fell asleep on him in the clubhouse or in one of their half-finished basements or in the back of the field trip bus when they were 13, 15, 17 years old. That he’s still having it now, when they’re both more than twenty years removed from the boys they used to be, is...less shocking, maybe, than it should be. _I could kiss him right now, and I think I want to._

He prods at that thought curiously, and finds that it doesn't freak him out as much as he would have expected. Maybe it’s just that as far as freakouts go, the nightmarish potential other reality he glimpsed between the lines of what Richie told him last night ranks a hell of a lot higher.

_I keep thinking I’m gonna open my eyes and I’ll be back in that cave with you skewered and bleeding out right on top of me._

That fucking claw coming down hard enough to shatter stone. Richie sobbing in his sleep.

Later. For now, Eddie jabs his finger into Richie’s ribs until he flinches and snuffles back into wakefulness. He watches Richie’s eyes flutter open, the blank dazed expression before he blinks several times and shifts carefully onto his side, facing Eddie.

“Morning,” he says. His voice is rusty, his expression guarded. Eddie wants, with a sudden fierceness that startles him, to climb on top of him and press down until he can’t tell where he ends and Richie begins.

Instead, he jabs his finger into Richie’s ribs again and says, “Morning. Come on, get up, I’m starving.”

“The continental breakfast—”

“I’m not eating at a fucking continental breakfast, _god_ , do you know how much of a food-safety nightmare those things are?”

Richie blinks at him again, then starts to smile. “There’s a diner down the road.”

“That’s _not_ better,” Eddie informs him, but he finds himself smiling back. “Fine. You’re buying.”

“I’m buying, huh?”

“Yeah, Mr. Big-shot Netflix Special, you’re buying,” Eddie says, kicking the blankets back and swinging his legs off the bed. As expected, his entire back pulls into a tight, painful knot as soon as he moves. Good thing he brought the entire contents of the medicine cabinet with him; there’s probably Advil in there somewhere. “You got a problem with that?”

Richie leans to grab his cracked glasses and slip them on, then flops back against the pillow, grinning so hard that one eye squints up. Broad shoulders, grizzled scruff, receding hairline and all: for a moment he looks so much like the boy Eddie remembers that something warm pinches at his heart, a sweet lingering bruise. “Yeah, alright, fine, I’ll spring for your dry wheat toast and overcooked eggs, Eduardo.”

“You’re going to get salmonella one of these days from eating raw egg yolks, and I’m going to be such a dick about it while you’re puking out your entire digestive system,” Eddie warns him. “I’m gonna go get dressed. Put some pants on before you meet me downstairs.”

“What, and deprive my adoring public of all this?” Richie asks, still grinning, and draws one knee up, pointing his toes in a half-assed glamour pose. It’s clearly meant to look ridiculous, and it does, but it’s also kind of absurdly appealing in a way that Eddie is absolutely not equipped to deal with on an empty stomach.

“Your adoring public will thank me,” he says, and escapes with Richie’s delighted laughter ringing in his ears.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also @glorious-spoon on on [Tumblr](https://glorious-spoon.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/glorious_spoon) if you'd like to come chat there!


End file.
